Social approach: Piliavin et al. (subway Samaritans)

Psychology AS · The core studies. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (1969) studied bystander behaviour: whether people help a stranger in an emergency. Earlier laboratory studies suggested diffusion of responsibility, where each person in a group feels less responsible, so help becomes less likely as the group gets bigger.

This was a field experiment on New York subway trains. A male 'victim' collapsed in the carriage, looking either ill (with a cane) or drunk. In some trials a model stepped in to help after a delay. Two observers secretly recorded who helped and how quickly.

Help was frequent and fast, especially for the victim with a cane, and it did not fall as the group grew. The researchers explained helping by the costs and rewards of acting.

Rules to remember

Aim: to investigate bystander helping in a real-life emergency and the factors that affect it.
Sample: about 4,450 subway passengers, an opportunity sample who did not know they were in a study; 103 trials.
Independent variables: type of victim (cane or drunk), race of victim (black or white), whether and when a model helped, and the number of bystanders.
Controls: the victim collapsed 70 seconds after the train left the station, on a journey of about 7.5 minutes with no stops; all victims dressed alike.
Results: the cane victim got spontaneous help in 62 of 65 trials (95%); the drunk victim in 19 of 38 trials (50%). About 90% of first helpers were men.
No diffusion of responsibility was found: help was not slower or rarer in larger groups.
Ethics: no informed consent, no right to withdraw, deception, possible distress and no debrief.

Common mistake

Many students write that the study showed diffusion of responsibility. It did not: helping stayed high when many passengers were present, perhaps because they were face to face with the victim and could not leave.

Worked example

In Piliavin et al. (1969) the cane victim was helped spontaneously in 62 of 65 trials and the drunk victim in 19 of 38 trials. Work out both percentages and say what they suggest.

Cane: 62 ÷ 65 × 100 = 95% (to the nearest whole number).
Drunk: 19 ÷ 38 × 100 = 50%.
Helping a drunk person may seem to have higher costs, such as risk or disgust, and he may be seen as responsible for his own state.
So the appearance of the victim, a feature of the situation, changed how often people helped.

Answer: About 95% for the cane victim and 50% for the drunk victim: help depends on the situation and on the perceived cost of helping.

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